As a collector of super-8 digests,one is bound to have films in their collection with the dreaded narrator. I've often wondered if the purpose for this was to help the story along,our there were legal reasons dictated by the studios. Of course Columbia Films were the most notorious for truly awful (and at times humorous) add-on. One of my favorites is Ken Films "The Poseidon Adventure" when we hear (after the very obvious visual) "The great ship has capsized". Thankfully there were a few Columbia digests that didn't have it, such as "Failsafe" and "Close and Encounters of the Third Kind." Others,such as "The Caine Mutiny" and "Bridge on The River Kwai" are almost unwatchable due to the droning of Mr.Narrator.

My guess has always been that the narration helps the viewer understand what is going on in the film. I only have encountered two films this far that contain the narration: "The Chase" (1966)/Columbia release and "The French Connection" (1971)/Ken Films release. The latter one wasn't bad at all, but I can remember one area of "The Chase" where the narration was heavy. Still, I had never seen "The Chase" and it was originally a 135 minute film, so condensing it down to 17 minutes must have been quite challenging. Did Universal 8 ever release any titles with narration too?